


blood, milk, and oil

by howlikeagod



Series: end-of-the-world beach vacay [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cooking, Food, Gen, alternate title: Katara's Kitchen Nightmares, and then being vague as fuck about what they're actually making cuz i got distracted by dialogue, food as love! food as family! food as culture! food as trauma!, it's about me googling recipes for 2 hours, it's about the creation and consumption, it's about the love languages, set between Southern Raiders and Sozin's Comet Part 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24601354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howlikeagod/pseuds/howlikeagod
Summary: A group of growing teens requires an awful lot of feeding. The Fire Lord's disused kitchen is more or less equipped to provide.Katara encounters four points of view on food.
Relationships: Aang & Katara (Avatar), Katara & Sokka (Avatar), Toph Beifong & Katara
Series: end-of-the-world beach vacay [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1520240
Comments: 152
Kudos: 2393





	blood, milk, and oil

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Minnesota" by the Mountain Goats
> 
> I haven't been as consistent with content warnings in this series as I have been in my longer fic but: allusions to genocide and colonialism, parental emotional neglect, and discussion of bloodbending

“Out! Out, out, out.” Katara smacks her brother in the middle of the back with a towel.

“I just wanted—”

“Out!” She braces her hands on either side of the open doorway. “There isn’t room in here for you to hang over me all the time while I’m making dinner.”

“But we always cook together?” Sokka tilts his head, genuinely confused. Not for the first time and certainly not the last, Katara considers where in the general area she could stuff Sokka so no one would ever find the body.

“ _I,”_ Katara says, emphasis on the _I,_ “have been cooking out of a pot we found in the woods for three months! Now we finally have an actual kitchen with actual cookware, and I have _had it_ with you sticking your filthy fingers in whatever I’m making to tell me it needs more _salt._ So I am making dinner, and you can sit out there and _wait._ ”

“But—”

“Zuko!” Katara snaps. Zuko looks up with a mixture of attention and pure panic. “Come here. You’re going to light the oven. And the stove. And whatever else needs lighting. Can you maybe just hold a pot and boil water with your hands?”

“Sure.”

“Aw, come on! Zuko gets to help?”

“Sorry, Sokka,” Zuko says, not sounding sorry at all. Katara is glad she doesn’t hate him anymore, or she would be really irritated by the smile seeing him taunt her brother puts on her face.

“Suki,” Katara says, “want to help me chop some vegetables?”

“Love to.” She smiles sweetly.

“My own girlfriend?” Sokka gasps. “The light of my life? My—Uh, my sweet… No, um, honey—”

“Don’t try to force it,” Suki says, pecking Sokka on the cheek, “honey.”

“Aang,” says Katara.

 _“Aang?”_ Sokka exclaims.

“It’s going to get pretty hot in here. Want to keep us all cool with a nice breeze?”

“Sure thing!” Aang leaps to his feet and gives her a crisp salute.

“And Toph,” Katara says, turning to the last of their company.

Toph, lying flat on her back in the courtyard, groans.

“What?”

“You don’t have to help.”

Toph perks up immediately.

“Sweet.”

“You all know your duties,” Katara calls to her newly-assembled team. She claps her hands. “Get to it!”

“Ginger!” Suki says.

“In the pan!” Katara instructs. She twists her hand and a bubble of the oil-and-water mixture she’d set aside drops itself into a sizzling wok. A cloud of steam billows toward the ceiling before Aang, leaning in at the window, pulls it out toward the evening sky. “Less heat on that, Zuko.”

Zuko nods. He closes his eyes and inhales slowly. The flame under the wok shrinks to a simmer. The rice in his hands keeps at a friendly, rolling boil.

“What’s next?” Suki scrapes the excess shreds of ginger into a box in the corner to spread in the garden later.

“We need the—” Katara stops. She smacks her forehead. “Eggs!”

“Eggs?” Suki repeats.

Aang pops his head in the window. “Eggs?”

All three fires in the kitchen dip before flaring to life again as Zuko breaks his concentration for the mightily important task of echoing, “Eggs?”

“Eggs!” Katara spins in place, looking from corner to corner of the kitchen—basket of fruit here, honeycomb there, big clay pot she cleaned out for resting dough in later, star anise, Sokka, sack of rice, tomato carrots—“Sokka!”

“I’m not here to stick my fingers in any pots,” he promises frantically. “I heard something about eggs?”

He holds up a small covered basket. Katara takes it, lifts the cover, and finds a perfect cluster of chicken duck eggs.

“How—?”

“After you kicked me out of the kitchen, I was just sitting around wondering what you guys were cooking in here. It wasn’t hard to figure out,” Sokka shrugs. “I did, like, almost all of the grocery shopping. But I realized you didn’t have any eggs, so.”

He holds the basket a little higher and pulls his lips into a timid smile.

“You…” Katara takes the basket gingerly like it might be a dream. “Remember what goes in a recipe?”

Sokka tilts his head.

“I pay attention, Katara.”

“I—” Katara lifts her head suddenly. The sound of sizzling and the smell of frying ginger hits her like an alarm. She whirls around, points a finger at Suki, and says, “Scallions!”

“On it!” Suki tips the scallions into the wok.

The last few steps go by quickly. Suki is precise and efficient with the vegetables, Zuko finishes up the rice, and Aang seems to somehow bend the comfortable smell of cooking _into_ the kitchen even while pulling any stray smoke right out.

Katara wipes her brow, then spots Sokka. Or rather his elbow, peeking into the open doorway from where he’s leaning against the wall just outside. She grabs an egg, weighs it once in her hand, and pokes her head around the corner.

“Hey.” She holds the egg out. Sokka looks up, from the egg to Katara, Katara to the egg.

“What?”

“Wanna do the honors?”

Sokka grins. He takes it and swaggers into the kitchen.

“Watch and learn,” he says. “This is how you crack an egg.”

He smacks it confidently against the edge of the pan. Yolk splatters across the stove.

“Uh.”

“Never mind,” Katara sighs.

“Yeah,” he says morosely as Aang laughs so hard he has to drape his body over the windowsill to keep from falling over, “I know. Out.”

Sokka wipes his yolk-covered hand on his pants as he leaves.

Katara is sure to check in on him as she doles out dinner—he’s not so put out that it’s impacted his appetite, at least. He eats with familiar gusto.

“This is good,” he says through bulging cheeks. “You guys did a great job.”

“Thanks,” Suki says. “It was a team effort, but we finally figured out how to crack an egg.”

Sokka swallows. His mouth drops open, about to defend his wounded honor. Suki, quick as a rat viper, pops the ends of her chopsticks between his gaping lips. Sokka closes his mouth reflexively and crunches.

“How’s the ginger?” Suki asks. Sokka glares.

“It’s the best ginger I’ve ever eaten,” he says flatly through a mouthful of the stuff. “You’re a culinary genius. Kiss me.” He leans forward with his mouth half open again, chewed-up ginger mush clearly visible as he lunges toward Suki’s face like a seagull crab that’s spotted an unattended dumpling.

“Gross,” Suki laughs, shoving him away.

Katara laughs around her own mouthful of rice. Suki gets to her feet and circles the courtyard in a joking attempt to escape. Sokka scrambles up to give chase, until a rogue brick pops an inch out of the ground and trips him.

“Oops,” Toph cackles.

Sokka grabs a scallion out of his bowl and throws it at Toph’s face. It bounces off her nose. Her eyes go as wide as a pair of pale green moons in her face.

“Uh oh,” Aang snorts.

A column of stone rises below Toph’s bowl, throwing it upwards. She strikes it out of the air. Sokka, grains of rice tumbling down the collar of his shirt, removes the bowl in question from the top of his head.

“Please don’t—” Katara starts. A warm, wet glob of oil and garlic strikes her on the cheek. She’s been caught in the crossfire of Sokka’s retaliation. “Oh. It’s on.”

If she’d known it would end in a food fight, Katara probably would have made something soup-based. That doesn’t mean she’s not going to win, though. Obviously.

“I didn’t even know there _was_ bok choy in this,” Aang says cheerfully as he lobs a mashed-up ball of rice like a snowball directly at Zuko.

“How did _you_ get involved?” Zuko snaps. He’s seemingly stolen a clean pan from the kitchen and is holding it in front of himself like a shield. The rice bounces off the metal, falls an inch, is caught in a mysterious and highly localized breeze, and flies up right into his face.

“I just wanted to be included,” he says, immediately before Katara dumps a handful of chunks of scrambled egg down the back of his shirt. “Ah!”

He hops around like an itchy kangaroo. Serves him right for tucking his shirt into his pants.

Katara turns her eyes to Zuko. He swallows visibly.

“I’m a neutral party,” he objects. “I haven’t engaged with this conflict! I’m—”

“Call this reparations,” Katara says. She pours a porcelain vessel of soy sauce directly over his head.

* * *

“No food fights this time,” is the first thing Katara says when she sees Toph in the open door of the kitchen.

“No promises.” Toph leans against the frame and crosses her arms. She has a quiet, smug little smile on her face that means she’s reminiscing fondly on some trouble she’s caused.

Katara bites back a laugh despite herself. “You’re not about to tell me Sokka started it?”

“No,” Toph shrugs, “I totally started it.”

“What do you need? Lunch is going to be a while.” Katara goes back to stirring the broth. She bought the stock rather than making it from scratch for a change—Katara is a fast learner, but being a waterbending master doesn’t make her a _soup_ bending master, no matter how many jokes Sokka makes about it.

“Actually,” Toph says slowly, “I was wondering if you needed some help.”

“What?” Katara turns so fast some of her own hair smacks her in the chin.

“Or not,” Toph shrugs, turning away. “Whatever. I don’t care.”

“Toph, wait.” Katara wipes her hands on the front of her pants and puts a hand on Toph’s shoulder before she can burrow herself in the dirt, or wherever it is she goes when she’s embarrassed. “I’d love it if you helped.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You can help me juice this.”

“I do love crushing things,” she says enthusiastically.

“That’s the spirit.”

“But I should warn you,” Toph adds as she joins Katara at the cutting area next to her pot of vegetable stock, “I’ve never cooked before.”

“Never?”

“My parents weren’t exactly tripping over themselves to let their helpless blind daughter loose in a place full of open flames and sharp objects,” she explains, crossing her arms again.

“Good thing they can’t see you now,” Katara jokes. Toph’s face scrunches up in a confused and confusing combination of anger and sadness. Katara could smack herself.

Toph breaks the tension with a sudden, forced bark of laughter.

“Yeah,” she agrees, “they’d keel right over. So, what do you need me to squash?”

“Oh, um.” Katara grabs the spikey plant off the counter and holds it out. “This.”

Toph reaches out a hand several inches away from Katara’s. This confuses Katara for the handful of seconds before she remembers the floor is made of wood. It’s the ground floor, but that layer between her feet and the earth must make things fuzzy for Toph. Katara moves her own hand to press the plant into Toph’s palm. Toph pats her fingers over the broad, sharp leaves before taking it gingerly.

“What _is_ it?”

“I don’t remember,” Katara says honestly. “It’s some cactus that only grows in the Fire Nation. The woman in the market said its juice was good in soup, though.”

Toph’s hand freezes around the weird plant.

“More _cactus juice?”_ she says, aghast.

Katara shocks herself with how hard she laughs at the connection—and the memory, if she’s honest, finally distant enough to be funny when circumstances made it anything but at the time.

“Oh no!” she gasps.

“You,” Toph wheezes, bent over and hardly breathing for her deep belly laughs, “you’re trying to poison Sokka b-because of the food fight, aren’t you?”

“I won’t tell him if you don’t,” Katara hiccups, wiping away a tear.

“It’ll be our secret,” Toph agrees with a final giggle.

“Good. Now I need two spoonfuls of juice out of that thing, so get squishing.”

“Aye-aye, your chefiness.” Toph plucks a leaf off the plant, cracks it in half, and starts pressing with the heel of her hand.

“Wait.” Katara shoos Toph’s hands away from their work. “You’re getting juice all over the countertop. You’re wasting it.”

“Can’t you just bend it into a bowl when I’m done?”

“Who knows what’s been on this counter,” Katara huffs.

“You were the last one to clean it,” she points out. “Shouldn’t _you_ know?”

Katara opens her mouth. She thinks about the point Toph is making. She shuts her mouth.

“That’s what I thought,” Toph says. She slams a fist down upon the helpless cactus leaf.

“At least use something besides your hands. That can’t be the most efficient way.”

“Now you sound like Sokka.”

“I do _not_ sound like Sokka! I sound like someone who’s actually cooked before.”

“Fine.” Toph throws her hands up. “What do _you_ want me to squish this plant with?”

Katara taps a finger against her chin as she looks around the kitchen.

“A-ha!” She grabs a wooden mallet off a hanging rack nearby. “Use this.”

“Thanks.” Toph takes the mallet, raises it above her head, and sends it crashing down. A burst of juice splatters in a two-foot radius.

Silently, Katara wipes the sticky line of juice off her face. She turns back around to find Toph grinning like an enraged hogmonkey and readying another blow.

“Maybe,” Katara says as she catches her friend’s wrist in one hand, “you should be a little gentler with the cactus.”

Toph pouts a little, but relents with a quiet, “Fine.”

She settles on placing the mallet on top of the cactus leaves, one at a time, and grinding it down with her hand. Katara checks on the broth and sets about chopping tomato-carrots.

“So,” Toph says after a while, “who taught you how to do all that cooking stuff?”

“My mom, mostly,” she says. The bright, tight skin of the tomato-carrot splits cleanly under her knife with a wet snapping sound.

“Oh.” Toph squishes a few more dribbles of juice out of a leaf and moves onto the next one. “I don’t think my mom knows how to cook either.”

“Really?”

“Rich people stuff,” Toph explains. “She has servants for that. I bet she’d be just as upset to see me getting my hands all sticky as kicking firebender butts.”

“There must be things she did teach you,” Katara says probingly. Toph is so desperate for her parents’ understanding—there has to be a reason. They have to have given her _something_ to miss about them.

Toph shrugs. Her next pass with the mallet and the cactus leaf yields almost nothing. A single drop of thick, amber juice rolls down to the countertop and oozes slowly into the growing puddle.

“She almost tried to teach me to read once,” Toph says at last.

“To… what?”

“Yeah,” she laughs. “Remember when I said I’d held books before? She didn’t really think that one through. Maybe she hoped if I just concentrated really, _really_ hard, I’d magically absorb all the knowledge at once.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It was. But a young lady should be educated!” she says in a high, snooty voice that doesn’t sound like her at all. Her voice drops back to normal. “She had my tutor read to me after that. I liked listening to him okay, especially the histories.”

“She didn’t read to you herself?” Katara asks quietly.

“No,” Toph shakes her head. “She didn’t.”

“Oh.”

“But she drank tea with me every day and asked how my lessons were going. And we always all ate dinner together. It’s not like I didn’t spend time with my parents. It’s not like they didn’t—”

Toph swallows. She mashes her nearly-flat cactus leaf with a vigor that startles Katara after how quiet the last couple minutes have been. Katara realizes suddenly that she hasn’t cut a tomato-carrot in all this time. Her knife has been hovering in the air, frozen, over unbroken sunset-colored skin.

“When—” Katara blurts, “when we first started traveling, I was so bad at cooking.”

“I thought you said your mom taught you?”

“She did. But only Water Tribe recipes. And Aang is a vegetarian.” Katara laughs at the memory. “I’d cooked seaweed and stewed sea prunes and stuff, but I didn’t know how to make soup without seal blubber. He literally had to teach me about vegetable stock.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Toph nods.

“Want to know the worst part?” Katara asks lowly. “Sokka still makes fun of me for it, but even he thinks I knocked over the cooking pot with waterbending by accident.”

“What did you do?”

“I knew Aang didn’t eat meat,” she explains, embarrassed, “but I didn’t realize that meant he didn’t eat _anything_ from an animal that you can’t get without killing it. It just didn’t occur to me.”

“No,” Toph says in gleeful disbelief.

“We still had some seal fat from the supplies Gran-Gran gave us, so I… used it. Sokka was baffled by the concept of not eating meat, and Aang was explaining why, and—” A blush heats her cheeks.

“You realized how bad you messed up!”

“We had to forage for berries,” Katara admits, muffled by the hand covering her face.

Toph throws her head back and laughs at Katara’s humiliation. Katara would be lying if she said she isn’t playing it up a bit for Toph’s sake, but it’s well worth the mockery to see her smile like that. Someday, once the Fire Lord is defeated and the world’s balance restored, she is going to have _words_ with Lao and Poppy Beifong.

“Is this enough cactus juice for your attempted fratricide?” Toph asks, gesturing to the puddle that has recently started dripping onto the floor.

Katara sighs and bends the whole of it into a wobbly amber bubble in midair. To her surprise, Toph holds out a hand then closes a fist, pulling what looks to be tiny flecks of grit from the nectar.

“Thanks,” Katara says. She bends the nectar into an empty bowl and measures out the proper amount.

“I was the one who made a mess. Don’t mention it.” Toph kicks a heel into the floor. “Just be glad the Fire Lord kept his servants downstairs. If we were any further from the ground, I might have gotten this mixed up with the bathroom.”

Katara giggles.

“I think you did a fine job, pupil Toph.”

“Huh.” Toph purses her lips thoughtfully.

“What?” Katara cocks her head. “You can dish out the nicknames but you can’t take them?”

“No, no. It’s just, nobody’s ever called me that. I was always _Lady Beifong_ when people wanted to be formal, or just _Toph_ when they didn’t. I don’t think anybody who was in charge of teaching me took it seriously.” Her foot scuffs along the floor again. “Except the badgermoles,” she adds.

“If you want, I can teach you what I know about cooking.”

“Thanks, Katara.” Toph smiles. “I appreciate the offer.”

“Of course,” she says kindly.

“For the record, though, this was super boring, so I’m going to have to turn you down.”

“Boring?” Katara frowns. “Then why did you want to help so bad?”

“Everyone else was having a great time last night, and Sokka wouldn’t stop whining about getting kicked out.” She shrugs. “I wanted to know what all the fuss was about.”

Katara’s mouth dangles open.

“Anyway,” Toph says while Katara is still gaping, “let me know when lunch is ready. Thanks for the lesson!” She turns on her heel, waves over her shoulder, and strides right out of the kitchen.

“Well,” Katara turns back to her unchopped tomato-carrots and mutters, “at least I can read.”

* * *

“Who put zebu-yak butter on this list?” Sokka exclaims from the courtyard loudly enough that Katara can hear him through the open attic window. “Where does someone even _get_ that? Zuko, do you even have zebu-yaks here?”

“Uh,” Zuko says, “probably on the northern side of the archipelago. In the mountains, maybe. They have a lot of imported livestock. Not around Ember Island though.”

“Huh. Probably for some weird new recipe Katara’s trying. I’ll ask around.”

“Want some company?” Suki offers. “Zuko, you can come too.”

“I can’t—”

“Aang is working on earthbending all afternoon,” Sokka interrupts. “Just come into town for once, man.”

“It’s broad daylight—”

“I’ll get you a hat.”

“Do you even see—”

“It’ll be a really big hat,” Suki promises.

“Fine.”

The three of them call goodbye to the house at large and head out. Katara shakes her head—surely she would have remembered putting something that specific on their shopping list.

It’s not important. She goes back to rifling through dusty boxes of linen and doesn’t think about it again.

“I got everything else on the list,” Sokka says later that afternoon, just as Aang and Toph wander into the courtyard on a break from training, “but I couldn’t find your zebu-yak butter.”

Katara opens her mouth with the intention of saying _I didn’t write that,_ but her eyes catch on Aang’s face over Sokka’s shoulder and the words die in her mouth. He’s sweaty and a little red-faced, but there’s no simple explanation for the way his eyes go briefly wide and so strangely, achingly sad.

“I—” Katara says. She forces herself to look back at Sokka, who’s staring at her like she’s grown a second head. “It’s fine. I’ll figure something else out.”

He nods and hands her the shopping basket. Katara starts towards Aang, but he isn’t where she left him a moment ago.

“Hey,” Katara says.

“Hey,” Aang looks up and smiles. Katara sits down on the edge of the roof, dangling her legs over the edge beside his. Despite their difference in height, his legs are nearly as long as hers. He’s going to be ridiculously gangly someday.

“What’s on your mind?”

Aang tilts his head. He looks out past the palm trees that ring the beach house estate, past the private strip of beach, out into the perfect sky-blue bay.

“Nothing,” he says.

“Okay. It’s just that I was wondering—” Katara swings her legs back and forth, not sure why the question feels so much bigger than what it is.

“What?”

“Did you need butter for something?” Katara worries at the way Aang cringes. “Sokka was asking who added it to the list, and Zuko and Suki didn’t know, and I know it wasn’t Toph. I was curious. That’s a strange request not to say anything about.”

“Oh.” Aang puffs out his cheeks and exhales a long stream of air. “Yeah, I wrote it.”

“Do you want to tell me why?”

He shifts uncomfortably.

“Butter tea,” he mumbles.

“I didn’t catch that—”

“Butter tea.” Aang offers her a halfhearted half-smile. “It’s an Air Nomad drink. You steep tea and then churn it with butter and salt. I haven’t had it in a while.”

“Oh. You were homesick.”

Aang nods.

“I’m sure we can find zebu-yak butter somewhere,” Katara says firmly. “Zuko said they might have it in the mountains on the northern side of the Fire Nation. Tomorrow, you and I can take Appa—”

“Katara, it’s okay.” Aang shakes his head. “It wouldn’t be the same anyway.”

“Why not?”

“The monks—” he clears his throat, “always made it with bison milk. I thought zebu-yaks might be the closest thing. But Appa is the only sky bison we know about, so.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Katara glares out into the bay. The afternoon is too sunny, too happy for a moment like this. She almost resents it.

She grits her teeth against the grief and diverts its flow. She’s stubborn like that.

“You know what?” she says. “We’ve been here for over a week, and I still haven’t made any desserts. Can you believe that?”

“I could go for dessert,” Aang says.

“Good. Because you and I are making red bean buns.”

“We are?” Aang blinks. “I’m supposed to get back to training with Toph in five minutes.”

“You let me worry about Toph. If she wants to get back to training so badly, she can help us cook and make it go faster.”

Aang grins. He floats to his feet and offers Katara a hand.

“Want a lift back down?” he asks. Katara smiles, takes his hand, and makes a sound not unlike a shriek when Aang pulls them both right over the edge of the roof.

It’s not a long fall. And the fall is a controlled one, which is functionally the same, if she remembers Teo’s gliding lesson, as flying.

* * *

“From now on, your shopping lists _must_ be Sokka-approved.”

“Oh, sorry,” Katara bites sarcastically, “I didn’t realize I needed you to sign off on every single thing I do.”

“Well, you should have,” Sokka retorts. “How many eggs have you gone through in the last five days, Katara? Do you know?”

“Ten,” she says with her chin held high.

“Forty-eight!”

“I have _not._ Give me that.” She snatches the paper out of Sokka’s hand. It’s full of tally marks and figures labeled in Sokka’s awful calligraphy. It does, however, indisputably outline the chunk of the budget dedicated solely to eggs. “Hmph.”

“You need to start planning your meal prep better,” Sokka says.

“What’s the big deal?” Toph interrupts. “Katara, I will happily scam everyone on this island to keep you freshly supplied with as many eggs as you want.”

“Thanks, Toph,” Katara replies flatly. “Alright, Sokka,” she sighs, “let’s go meticulously plan for the week with no room whatsoever for spontaneity.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

“And the day after that?” Sokka prompts, brush poised over his long scroll of notes.

“I think we should have something special,” Katara says. “Since we’re doing all this planning, we might as well put it to use.”

“Sure, what are you thinking?”

“I think…” Katara purses her lips and thinks about friendship, about moms, about homesickness, and about how she can care and be cared for in the little ways on top of the big ones. “A proper Water Tribe dinner. Like a feast, except with six of us.”

“Oh, _man._ That would be great!” Sokka starts writing frantically.

“They eat plenty of fish around here,” Katara says, incrementally more excited with every word, “so that won’t be a problem.”

“And I think the main differences between chicken-skink and arctic hen are the plumage and the teeth.”

“Tons of seaweed!”

“They don’t seem to eat seals around here, but I know they have them!”

“Please don’t start illegally hunting the local wildlife, Sokka.”

“You don’t know it’s illegal. But okay. We’ll make do with the fish, the reptile birds, the seaweed—Oh! Man, we’re not going to be able to find sea prunes _anywhere._ ”

“That should be fine,” Katara says without thinking. “Ocean kumquats are a lot like sea prunes if you… stew them long enough…”

It takes her a dizzy moment to remember why she knows this and where she heard it first. _A big Water Tribe dinner._ Another waterbender doing what she could to make a little piece of home in the Fire Nation.

“Katara?” Sokka’s voice comes from very far away. “Are you alright? Hey, talk to me.”

The last time Katara was in a Fire Nation kitchen chopping vegetables, stewing kumquats, bringing a home-cooked taste of the Southern Water Tribe into the heart of the nation that nearly destroyed it, she did so for a woman who would reach inside her body with a violent, bloody grip and force her to reach inside someone else’s.

And then Katara would do it again. Of her own free will this time, which is infinitely worse, and to a man who wasn’t even the one she was looking for. Not an innocent man, but does anyone deserve to have their own body taken? Their blood suddenly someone else’s, their muscles, down to the rushing rivers of life inside them, Katara knows how it feels and how it feels is—

“Katara! Look at me.” Sokka’s hands on her shoulders shock Katara back into her body. She jerks back violently and breaks his grip with hardly any effort. He wasn’t holding her very tightly, after all.

“Sorry,” she says. She’s startled to taste salt in her mouth.

“It’s okay. What happened?” Sokka has his serious face on. Katara used to find it funny how he played at being an adult.

She hasn’t found it funny in a long time.

“I just… remembered something I didn’t want to think about.” Katara blinks. The taste in her mouth is tears, not blood. It’s a small comfort.

“We don’t have to do this,” he says, gesturing to the notes he’s taken about their miniature Water Tribe feast.

“No.” Katara shakes her head. “I want to.” _I need to,_ she doesn’t say, but she feels it keenly. She needs to make better memories. She needs to make the reclamation of home into something safe.

“Okay,” Sokka agrees.

“Okay,” Katara echoes. “But maybe no sea prunes.”

“No sea prunes.” Sokka hunches over his list and scribbles a note that will be all but illegible to anyone but himself. “Got it.”

Katara sniffles. Sokka generously and wisely doesn’t comment on it when she wipes her nose on the edge of her tunic.

“Suki,” Katara says. “You’re on chopping duty.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Zuko and Aang, temperature regulation. I want that meat cooked through perfectly.”

“Yep.”

“On it!”

“Toph, you’re here to keep up morale.”

“Start yelling when these slackers don’t keep up the pace. Got it.”

“Sokka?”

“Yeah?”

Katara hands him a single, perfect egg.

“Just don’t waste any,” she says. “We have a very strict budget.”

The Water Tribe feast is a massive hit. Zuko eats three servings of almost-arctic hen. Aang can’t get enough seaweed salad. Suki, just as familiar with Southern seafood, insists Katara has done a better job with the salmon-crab than she’s ever tasted.

It’s good. It’s better than good, with her family around her. Katara thinks that next time she might give the ocean kumquats a try.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this fic, find a local organization working towards justice! Remember: Black Lives Matter, defund the police, be safe and be well.


End file.
